My son has one more day of school left and I’ve got one more week of working the shop before summer vacation begins around here. I’ve got great plans, but the top plan is to be flexible yet organized! We are changing up a few things in the running of our household and also planning on doing a little bit of light summer schooling around here too. This is the planning week and hopefully over the coarse of the next 7 weeks of our summer I will be able to share with you some of the fun things we did!

First up in the area of summer schooling:

My hope is to lightly do an artist of the week, using this book as our guide. In our weekly library trips I hope to grab a handful of books on that artist to have in our house while we are studying.
Both my kids have completely outgrown those lovely 2 hours naps, but we are instigating a mandatory 30 minute reading time and a 30 minute play in your room quiet time. The rooster is working towards a backpack and a backpacking trip with his father at the end of the summer (more on his reading challenge in another post) so he has a stack of 12 books he has to work through.
The chick is entering Kindergarten, so we will continue working through all the Kindergarten sight words and also continue working through Explode the Code (my most favorite phonics books of all times!). I’m still not 100% sure what the Rooster is going to focus on. More than likely we will do some hard work on memorizing multiplication facts and some other grammar/writing maintenance things. We will also take at least weekly library trips (spending one of our one hour quiet times at the library) and also enjoying all the special summer stuff the library will be hosting.

Second up in the area of home maintenance:

We are changing up our chore & responsibility chart. I’ll go more into this in another post when it’s all complete. I pretty much used much of the ideas from this example and created one to fit with our family. The essential idea is that there are things we do as a family that are responsibilities and there are things we can do that are extra (aka contributions) that we can earn money for (we are using the word “commission” versus allowance). We will have a weekly payday on Sunday and the kid’s will be responsible for keeping a daily time sheet.

The other big change are the technology cards. My kids get about an hour of “free” tv time during the day. Typically Wild Kratts & the Electric Company in the afternoon while I’m cooking dinner. These cards are for those times when they are “bored” and are looking for something to do. They will each get a card every Sunday and each punch is worth 45 minutes. They won’t get a new card until the following Sunday, so if they use it up before then, they are basically unplugged until they get another one. These cards cover using the iPad, using the computer, watching a show on tv/netflix or playing the Wii.

Those are the two biggest areas of structure in our summer. Honestly, the reason I’m putting the shop on vacation is so that I can have fun with them this summer. We have a pool and a park across the street, a fabulous library within 5 minutes and the mountains within 30. I want to be with them this summer in a way I just haven’t let myself before. Enter the Pinterest summer board.